DESCRIPTION: Women constitute approximately one-third of those identified as alcohol-abusing or alcohol-dependent individuals in the United States. Why excessive alcohol consumption may arise as an activity preferred over other activities has been the subject of extensive experimental scrutiny over the past several decades. Alcohol-preferring and alcohol-nonpreferring rodent lines are now available to study genetic contributions to excessive alcohol consumption. Behavioral models have been developed to identify environmental variables which may facilitate or impede the initiation and long-term maintenance of alcohol self-administration. However, most of the paradigms used to investigate the role of these variables in the development of excessive alcohol consumption have involved male subjects only despite the fact that some evidence is available to suggest that alcohol self-administration and the behavioral and physiological effects of alcohol consumption may be gender-dependent. The present experiments are designed to study gender differences in alcohol-seeking behavior in a continuous access situation that shares many characteristics with situations in which humans consume excessive amounts of alcohol. The continuous access situation also offers the opportunity to systematically study alcohol-seeking behavior as a function of the female estrus cycle. The information obtained in these experiments will be an important first step to guide the development of appropriate, gender-dependent, alcohol abuse prevention and treatment strategies.